I really don’t think there’s anything better than spending the weekend in the kitchen baking, with a Spotify playlist on the go.
And last weekend that’s what I did.
I had a lot of carrots in the fridge after I used them to make another carrot cake, so what better way to use them up than by baking two more carrot cakes?!
Both of these recipes are by Mary Berry. When I started this blog I talked about all my recipe books but I think most of the things I’ve made have been from a Mary Berry book. What can I say? She’s the best! But I have got more than two cookbooks, I promise!
The first thing I made was her American Spiced Carrot Traybake. It’s quite a dense mix but it smells amazing. Rather excitingly, this was also the first time I’d used the grater attachment on my food processor. We all have our limits, and grating 275g of carrots by hand is mine.
The cake itself was nice and light, but the flavours were very subtle. This has ginger and cinnamon in and I thought the spices would have come through a bit stronger.
It’s nice though and the cream cheese frosting, which also has honey in it, is really lovely.
Then I made Mary’s Carrot and Orange Loaf from the same book. Again it was quite a stiff mixture so I did add the drop of milk Mary recommends to help loosen it up a bit.
I also didn’t quite have enough carrots left for this one, so it might not be as carrot-ty as it should have been but I made it on a Sunday morning in my pyjamas and I wasn’t going out to buy one more carrot.
Surprisingly I preferred this cake. I thought I would have preferred the traybake, but the loaf had a stronger flavour and I loved the fact that it was crunchy on the top but soft in the middle. It didn’t really rise though which was disappointing.
Having tested both of these, I still think I prefer the carrot cake from my Good Housekeeping book which is the recipe I use whenever I make a carrot cake. I don’t know why – I think it has more carrot in it, yet it’s so light and seems more moist.
If you like carrots I hope you liked this post. 🥕